1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to material handling devices, and more particularly, to paper feeding structures used for continuously feeding an elongated strip-type paper, carrying indicia thereon, to a reproducing machine, concurrently with the feeding from the apparatus of the invention to such machine of an elongated strip of paper upon which the indicia are to be reproduced.
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
In recent years, great progress and innovation has occurred in the field of document reproduction and copying. The xerographic process and other dry methods of high-speed copying have enabled substantial and significant advances to be attained in information dissemination, storage and retrieval, and have immensely accelerated the work of clerical personnel in various capacities. For the most part, the types of copying apparatus or devices which have been developed are based upon the frequent need to copy letter and legal-size documents which are supplied and used in standardized sizes, usually not exceeding about 14 inches in length and about 10 or 11 inches in width.
As the most widely used reproducing machines operate, original imprinted documents of the described sizes are consecutively fed to a copying location within the machine by means of certain feed rollers, and concurrently, one or more sheets of paper upon each of which the information appearing on the document is to be copied are synchronously fed to the copying location where the reproduction of the indicia on the copies is caused to occur. With these types of machines, it is cumbersome, difficult and time consuming to effectively reproduce documents which are of significantly greater length than the more conventional and widely encountered documents, and in such cases it is often necessary to paste-up a series of conventionally sized sheets upon which segments of the elongated original document have been reproduced, in order to simulate the long original document. Examples of the types of inordinately long documents which, on occasion, are thus reproduced are galley proofs of manuscripts, oil and gas well logs, electrocardiograms, strip charts made on various types of continuous recorders, adding machine tapes as used by accountants and the like. Although certain xerographic reproducing machines have recently been devised which will permit copies of especially long documents to be made, the manner in which the reproduced copies are formed, discharged and then must be assembled has not been optimum. Particularly has this been true in the case of elongated original documents of the fanfold type--that is, documents which are folded or pleated in accordion style along a number of fold lines spaced longitudinally of the document and extending transversely thereacross. Since exact correspondence in indicia matching is essential in the reproducing of such long charts as well logs or electrocardiograms, the practice has often been to reproduce these documents by much more expensive procedures, such as blueprinting, which enable the entire document to be precisely reproduced by a one-shot process.
One type of patent which has been recently proposed for feeding fanfolded documents to a photographically reproducing machine is Walters U.S. Pat. No. 3,299,772. More recently, Hichcock et al. U.S. Pat. No. 3,443,554 depicts a xerographic reproducing apparatus in which fanfold paper, such as a computer printout, is fed from a paper tray into the machine, and is carried across the platen in a series of incremental movements which are synchronized with the feeding of a plurality of sheets of paper upon which segments of the document are to be reproduced. A shortcoming of this apparatus is, of course, that the several segments upon which the elongated fanfold document is reproduced must then be pasted-up or assembled to correspond with the original in overall length, and by appropriate registration of the printing on the segments so as to correspond with that upon the document which is the original to be reproduced.